[lbo-talk] Popinjays and Wide Boys

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Lance Murdoch lancemurdoch at gmail.com, Sat May 21 08:55:25 PDT 2005:
<snip>
>The liberal Michael Lewis followed the various Republican 
>presidential candidates around in 1996, and found Patrick Buchanan 
>relatively one of the more personable, good-humoured and honest 
>candidates.  And in fact, Buchanan rarely engages in ad hominem 
>attacks against others, and when then usually in a joking manner. 
>On the other hand, former leftists like David Horowitz, the Dissent 
>and Commentary crowd (or as Woody Allen called them, the Dissentery 
>crowd), drink-soaked popinjay Snitch and so forth do almost nothing 
>but make ad hominem attacks on leftists.  I mean, Norman Podhoretz 
>named his book "Ex-Friends".

To insult others cruelly is inhumane, but not to insult anyone at all 
goes against human nature.

Lately, we are treated to charming insults the British trade with one 
another: popinjays (at 
<http://news.google.com/news?q=popinjay&num=100&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&sa=N&tab=wn>) 
and wide boys (at 
<http://news.google.com/news?num=100&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&q=%22wide+boy%22>). 
That gives me an idea.

It is said that Karl Marx combined German philosophy, French 
politics, and English economics to create a potent mix of historical 
materialism.  American leftists might emulate militant defense of 
leisure from the French, passion for community organizing from the 
Venezuelans, and ingenious insults from the British, in order to 
reinvigorate political culture on the left.
-- 
Yoshie

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